Crocker knew that meant casualties and wounded. “You wait here,” he said, turning to Mancini. “I’m going to see if I can help.”
Akil chimed in, “I’m coming with you.”
With a borrowed medical kit and two Sarsilmaz Kilinç 2000 semiautomatic 9mm pistols, he and Akil hurried left along the main street.
As he ran, the thick, stomach-turning smell of Ritchie lying on the ground hit Crocker again. His throat turned dry and he started to feel sick. Leaning on the hood of a parked truck, he felt the muscles in his abdomen convulsing and he threw up.
“Go back, boss,” Akil said. “I can handle this.”
“No, I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not. Wait here. I’ll get you some water.”
“Screw that.”
Three short blocks later they reached the Turkish police building. Pushing through the throng of onlookers and stepping around the six-foot-deep crater and smoking ruin of what was left of the truck that had carried the bomb, they confronted the pancaked façade of a modern six-story building.
“Holy shit!” Akil exclaimed.
Crocker had seen too many scenes like this.
The sickening smell of ammonium and burning plastic lingered in the air-a telltale sign of an ammonium nitrate car bomb. Half-dressed Turkish firefighters were trying to extinguish a furious blaze on the third floor. Scattered around them lay bodies, parts of bodies, the twisted remains of furniture, glass, and rubble. People trapped in the building called for help.
“What do we do now?” Akil asked.
“Follow me,” Crocker said, crossing to a passageway along the far side of the building where rescue workers in blue-and-red helmets were carrying out people on stretchers. The heat and dust were oppressively thick. Pushing forward, they climbed through the rubble to the back. All the windows there had been blown out, and although the six stories were still intact, the whole structure looked about to collapse.
Men from inside a basement floor were shouting in Turkish and waving pieces of clothing. Crocker and Akil knelt in the broken glass and lifted out a stretcher bearing a wounded man through the broken frame of a window. They handed it up to rescue workers, grabbed an empty stretcher, passed it inside, and got ready to take the next wounded individual.
After the fourth one, Crocker’s arms were aching and sweat was dripping from his brow. “There are prisoners trapped downstairs,” he heard a woman behind him say in English.
“Where?”
“Over there.” She pointed to a pancaked section of the building to their right.
He stood and acknowledged the woman in the blue Turkish EMS uniform. “Thanks.”
Stepping over a chunk of smoldering, undistinguishable flesh, he pulled at Akil’s sleeve and pointed to the little space in the collapsed concrete where a man was attempting to pull himself through. His shoulders were stuck and he grimaced in pain.
“Calm down,” Crocker told him. “We’ll get you out.”
“American?” the trapped man asked, his face covered with white dust and vivid red blood dripping from the top of his head.
“Canadian.”
“Toronto Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadiens?”
“The Leafs, of course.”
Together, the SEALs used their legs to pivot a chunk of concrete to the right so it continued to hold back the debris above it but opened enough space for the man to worm through.
He smiled and embraced them, even though his right foot was a mess. A relief worker with a Canadian patch on his shoulder led the man off. Weird coincidence, Crocker thought, his throat and nostrils clogged with dust and smoke.
The space they had opened allowed more prisoners to squeeze out. Crocker was helping one with an injured arm when he recognized the face of the Syrian boy he had seen earlier with his family.
“Hakim.”
“My friend! My friend! Mr. Wallace.”
He knelt in the rubble, cleaned and dressed a cut near the kid’s elbow, and asked, “Where’s the rest of your family?”
“Hospital. They go to hospital.”
“Good. What’s your last name?”
“Gannani.”
“Hakim, stay with me. You can be my assistant. Okay?”
“Yes.” The boy smiled, revealing a large space between his upper front teeth.
Crocker found Akil on his knees, still passing empty stretchers to the workers inside. Wiping the perspiration from his forehead, Crocker said, “I’m taking this kid to the hospital and will meet you back at headquarters.”
“Who’s he?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“When?”
“I’m going now.”
“I mean, when will you be back at HQ?” Akil asked.
“Soon as I’m finished.”
“Remember, we’ve got a mission.”
“I know. I’ll be no more than an hour.”
He and the boy worked their way to the front of the building, stopping to disinfect and bandage wounds and clean faces. Crocker directed Hakim into the back of a blue-and-white medical van. A young female nurse with pale blond hair leaned on his shoulder and sobbed throughout the five-minute ride uphill.
“You’re doing good work,” he said to her in English. “These people need you.”
She nodded and wiped her eyes. “Nona.”
“Wallace.”
“Polish.”
“Canadian.”
Cute girl. No more than twenty-five.
He lost her in the chaos of the hospital-a parking lot and entrance lined with stretchers; inside, stressed-out EMS workers, doctors, and nurses shouting orders in Turkish and Arabic and running to and fro.
He saw a little girl lying on her back fully conscious, with her stomach, liver, and intestines exposed. He held her hand, grabbed a doctor, and locked his eyes on her dark-brown ones as they wheeled her into surgery-heroism and tragedy all around him. Everyone pitching in to save lives.
Crocker worked his way down a green corridor, administering help where it was needed-setting one man’s broken femur, removing broken teeth and debris from a soldier’s throat, handing out bottles of water to people in shock. Hakim ran upstairs to try to locate his family.
Time flew past, with more wounded arriving by the minute. Then, as though someone had turned off a tap, the flow of incoming stopped and the entire hospital and all the people in it seemed to relax.
Crocker was leaning over a gurney applying a cold compress to a minor burn on an old man’s arm when Hakim tugged the back of his shirt. From the expression on his face, Crocker could tell that he had found his family.
“Where?” Crocker asked.
“Floor three. Room 312.”
“Good. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Ten minutes later, he climbed the steps and found a large rectangular room packed with beds and cots. Some patients rested on mats on the floor. The Syrian family stood beside a bed in the far corner by a window covered with old mustard-colored curtains. The sun through the curtains cast a golden hue over their heads and shoulders.
Mother and father greeted him with hugs and kisses. Both pointed proudly to their daughter, lying on her back with her eyes closed. An IV drip fed her right arm, and her left foot was wrapped in bandages, indicating that the doctors had treated it in time.
Crocker nodded with relief and turned to the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Gannani beside him, each clutching one of his hands and smiling and weeping at the same time.
“I’m very glad,” he said.
“Allahu akbar,” the father muttered. God is great.
“Yes, Allahu akbar,” Crocker repeated. It didn’t matter that he was Christian and the Gannanis Muslim. They were all giving thanks-whether they were referring to a divine creator, karma, or random good luck. The Gannanis had no home to go back to, no country, and little more than the clothes on their backs, but they were grateful to be together with their children and alive.
Through Hakim, the parents asked Crocker about his own family and nodded with affection and muttered blessing to Allah as he described Holly and Jenny back in Virginia.